This organic food and agri commodities business started in early 2000 with the mission of giving small-scale Indian farmers access to a global $52bn marketplace for certified organic products. Today, it is one India’s largest exporters of certified organic products to Europe and the United States. The organization works closely with over 80,000 farmers to grow, harvest and process organic goods through fair and ethical practices.
The organization led by its founder leader, by 2019, had grown considerably with a sizeable turnover, more than 500 employees and manufacturing facilities in India, Philippines and Africa. However, the founder leader was concerned whether the organization is ready for the next phase of growth. The organization had a stable core group of leaders but there was a challenge of consistency and predictability in monthly business results. Continuous follow up was required to get things done which had raised concerns about the level of ownership for business results among the leaders. The fast-paced growth had raised demands of the leadership group which they were falling short of meeting, which was the exhausting the bandwidth of the founder leader.
Our Approach & Solution
The initial conversations with the founder leader gave us a preliminary insight into what the founder leader saw as challenges within the organization.
In our experience, shared clarity of purpose and alignment on what the team needs to do & how it needs to work together are crucial for the success of an organization. So, the first step was to do a more detailed insighting which we did by
- Conducting 1-1 structured conversations with the core group
- Soliciting feedback from employees up to the mid management level on the organization through our proprietary tool – Value Dynamics Diagnostic
These insights from the conversations and the Value Dynamics Diagnostic highlighted the need to
- improve strategic clarity
- bring in accountability and ownership at the leadership level
- strengthen systems and processes
- anchor culture building efforts around Values
The Results
The insights were shared with the core group and roadmap to get the organization ready for the next phase of growth agreed with them. This paved the way for the following interventions, each one done through the process of co-creation with the leadership team
- Co-creating the 5-year business aspiration and strategic roadmap
- Defining the success measures for the Aspirations and translating them into annual goals for the next financial year
- Re-designing the organization structure at the leadership level to support the set business aspirations and strategic directions
- Re-designing the performance management process to strengthen the linkage of business goals with functional and individual goals. This process was started at the leadership level and has since been cascaded further down-the-organization
- Streamlining its approach to remuneration including the variable pay plan to manage costs and drive performance
- Co-creating the Core Values for the organization, which were formally articulated for the first time since inception of the company. These have now been cascaded throughout the organization.
The above-mentioned interventions have helped build collective clarity & ownership of the co-created growth roadmap and laid the foundation for enabling execution of the roadmap.